


Once Around

by Missy



Category: Futurama
Genre: Episode Related, F/M, Post-Canon, Romance, Second Chances
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-22
Updated: 2014-07-22
Packaged: 2018-02-09 22:47:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2000838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fry and Leela have a second chance - but what are they going to do with it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once Around

**Author's Note:**

> Written for SmallFandomFest: Prompt: Frama, Fry/Leela, "Let's do it all again."

“Leela?”

“Hmm?” 

“Leela. Wake up.” 

Glacierally, Leela’s single eyelid began to flutter before raising and fixing on Fry’s smile. She yawned into his forearm and stretched her own limb against the pillow, trying to focus on the blinking green text sprawled across her wristamajig. “What time is it?”

“Two.” 

Her expression turned mean. “There had better be a cup of coffee with my name on it when I get out of this bed,” she muttered.

“No! Please don’t get up yet.” She rolled over and watched him in the semidarkness, feeling a shock of sympathy. I’m sorry,” he muttered against her shoulder. “I couldn’t sleep.”

Leela couldn’t blame him for that; she was surprised by the ease with which she’d found slumber. They’d experienced so much during their long marriage, so much of it happy, so much of it lived alone, and she needed time to absorb it all herself. But Fry seemed to be excited beyond her ability to calm him. “What’s on your mind?”

“I was just thinking about yesterday.” 

“Which part?” she wondered. It had, after all, lasted decades, stretching on for what normal people might call an aeon. And now they had been returned to the safety of the present and their previous youth, and there Fry immediately proposed to her. 

“Everything.”

She rolled over and faced him. “No wonder you can’t sleep.”

He managed a quick smile for her. “I was thinking about what I’d like to do differently this time,” he confessed. 

Leela leaned backward. Well, there was something she’d been vaguely considering. She was, after all, a lot more sophisticated than she had been when she’d left the Planet Express building for her appointed date at the Vampire State Building. She’d seen the entire planet, and several others besides. She’d tasted exotic food and seen eons old monuments. She’d seen any and everything the earth had to offer, and shared every single second of it with the man who’d meant the most to her. 

The very realization of how complete and satisfying her life with Fry had been made a fresh idea pop into her brain. “We need to think galactically! We could go planet hopping, even universe hopping. And not just this galaxy – every galaxy known to man!”

This brightened Fry right up. “I could eat burgers forty million light-years away!”

“Always thinking ahead,” she muttered into his shoulder. Fry got a gentle tousle of his locks for his trouble. “Next time we get married I want our families to be unfrozen.”

“That would be nice. It was pretty weird playing everybody else’s parts,” he said. “Especially when Bender tried to steal your mom’s broach.”

“And then I had to punch him.” She laughed. “So much punching. It’s too bad we’re the only two people in the whole world who share that memory.”

“We don’t have to be!” Fry pointed out. “I could ask the Professor to make us some kind of memory freezy capture thing!”

“…I think the word you’re looking for is ‘pictures’.” She smiled at Fry’s nod. “We could always find out if anyone or anything remembers us from that time. You never know when parallel dimensions might collide.” She thought about it for a good long minute; imagined a world where they could have some proof that they’d traveled the world for over fifty years, had shared experiences that no two humans had ever shared, had lived in a place and time that was their personal Eden, that had turned them into happy, backpacking bums for the first time in their lives, separating them from the workaday world around them. 

“That’d be great, wouldn’t it?” Fry asked. “You want to remember, don’t you Leel?”

“Of course. It’s going to be weird, being the only two people on earth who remember anything of that time. Proof’s always good to have around.” For blackmail purposes, she mentally added, remembering Fry’s using the Statue of Liberty’s arm for friction to strike a match against. 

“We could go anywhere this time,” Fry reminded her. “Maybe we could go to the zoo! In the French galaxy.” 

“Uh, the hippos there are so snooty.” Leela’s voice took on a mocking quality. “Please, Madame, watch the cabbage, si’l’vous plait,” she said through her nose.

Fry chuckled. “You’re funny. Just like their Jerry Lewis bird they have,” Fry said, and then imitated it. “Froimaven tweet!”

Leela groaned. “Please don’t, not this late at night.”

“Okay,” Fry whispered. “I can be really quiet! See?”

She sighed. “Fry….what would you change?”

That actually made him think it over and go blessedly quiet for a second. “I wouldn’t change a thing about us. Not even one little tiny second of it.” He paused. “Maybe we’ll have kids this time,” he suggested. “I sort of missed out on having some little person with my eyebrows and your left nostril…”

“Fry. Stop.”

“But wouldn’t it be neat?” he wondered enthusiastically. “Just imagine having a little us.”

“Hopefully,” Leela said dryly. “They’d be a little ‘them’.”

“TRIPLETS?” squeaked Fry. “That’s way too much pressure!” 

“They’d be their own person!” Leela said, highly tempted to whap him with her pillow. “And if we were going to have a baby at all, I’d like to think we’d adopt,” she replied, closing her eyes again. “There are so many kids who need the kind of help we can give them.”

“You’re right, Leela! Just think of all the advantages an orphan would get if they lived with us! They could even have their own personal robot!”

“Somewhere, Bender just shuddered,” Leela said, rolling over. “I guess my point is that just because it doesn’t look like we lived through it all doesn’t mean we didn’t,” she said. “We’ll always have our memories. And this time we’ll have all of the time in the world to share it with our friends.”

“That sounds great,” Fry muttered, curling around her form. “Leela?”

“Mph?” 

“I love you.”

She smiled into her forearm. “I do too. Love you,” she corrected herself, “not myself.”

Silence passed between them. Leela felt herself drifting off to sleep when Fry spoke up again. “What now?”

“Leela? I’m glad that if I have to live my whole life over again, I get to live it with you.”

She squeezed his hand by way of answer and felt pretty glad, too.

**Author's Note:**

> This fanfiction uses characters from **Futurama** , all of whom are the property of the **Fox Network**. No money was gained from the writing of this fanfiction and all are used under the strictures of of the Berne Convention.


End file.
